JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: CHEAP EFFORT AT "SOFT" ATTACK ON ASSANGE - PATHETIC BUT CONSIDER THE SOURCE FROM A CANADIAN PROPAGANDA MILL MUCH LIKE AMERICAN "THINK TANKS" - ASSANGE IS A JOURNALIST AND HE DOES WHAT CORPORATE JOURNALISM STOPPED DOING LONG AGO, INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING - TECHNOLOGY'S EFFECT ON WHISTLEBLOWING - THE MANY ILLEGALITIES IN ASSANGE'S ARREST

John Chuckman


COMMENTS POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY WESLEY WARK ON CBC NEWS



“Julian Assange and WikiLeaks did a disservice to whistleblowing

“The classic principles of whistleblowing involve righting a specific wrong through targeted exposure”



The author is, of course, entitled to hold whatever views he wishes.

But these views of Assange and WikiLeaks are to my mind narrow, unimaginative, and with a touch of unpleasant spitefulness.

Unimaginative? Yes, the author has no concept that technology changes everything, including the very nature of whistleblowing.

The fact is that Assange will be celebrated for years to come as a very important figure for his time, a very courageous one too.

Chelsea Manning - well, courage and human decency do not come any finer. Her motives were the best, and I could only wish they were to be found more frequently in this age of mass killing and unnecessary American imperial wars.

There are so many illegalities and irregularities in Assange's arrest, I'm not sure he will ever be brought to trial, but he will be put through years of trouble and expense for sure.

Secret police entering an embassy? A country rescinding political asylum status? Cancelling his naturalized citizenship? And doing so for a big fat loan from the US? And we are talking of American laws which have no legal application in other countries. And then there was that instantaneous, vindictive sentence from a British judge over his bail?

Appalling, all of it. And just one more example of America’s elbowing everyone out of its way.

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Response to another comment:

Absolutely, he is a journalist. He has won a large number of awards as a journalist.

He is the classic investigative reporter, only one scaled-up immensely by the power of technology.

And he fills that role at a time when it virtually no longer exists in corporate journalism.

Corporate papers and broadcasters, all of them, only rally and support the national government's policies, and that's true in every major western country under America’s corrosive influence.

Not one of them would think of embarrassing his or her government with truth about dark deeds, and they are engaged in many dark deeds under the influence of America's new imperial drives in the Middle East and other places.

Corporate journalists simply do not do journalism anymore. They carry-on an elaborate charade which often validates government disinformation and propaganda.

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Response to a comment about author Wesley Wark being and a faculty member of the Munk School of Global Affairs:

The Munk School has offered some appalling lecture series, including from a creep like Tony Blair. It pretty much functions like one of the many American think-tanks, that is, as a propaganda mill.

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Response to a comment saying “Assange made his bed, now he has to lay in it:”

Gee, how did you ever come up with such an imaginative new turn of phrase?

Stale old words for stale old minds.